As you have likely read for yourself, the Liberals, and NDP have agreed to form an “unprecedented” coalition government to replace Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. This coalition will also be supported by the Bloc Quebecois for at least 18 months. To make this happen, they need to bring down the Conservative government in a vote of non-confidence, which could happen on Monday. From there, the three opposition parties can tell the Governor General they have the confidence to form government together, and she can accept this or call an election. You can read the rest of the details for yourself.

At first, it’s tempting to buy into the Harper defence that all “Dion” is trying to do is steal power and go against Canadians’ wishes for who they want as Prime Minister. Some commenters on CBC are calling this a “coup”.

Come on people, let’s set the theatrics aside. This isn’t a coup, no matter how much Harper is going to kick and scream. A coup is when (according to Wikipedia) there is “sudden unconstitutional overthrow of a government”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but everything happening here is within the rules of a constitution. Furthermore, all individuals and parties involved were elected by Canadians. No, maybe YOU didn’t vote for them (of course no one voted for all of them), but they were elected. As for stealing power by way of a coalition, wasn’t this basically what Harper did when he gained power after merging his party with the PC party?

Coalition governments seem scary and wrong because they are new to us, but in reality, many countries in the world already use coalition governments regularly.  They probably look at Canada and think its scary and wrong that just one party usually has all the power, and that we really just alternate between 2.

Truth is, more Canadians voted for all of the opposition parties together than the Conservatives, since they still failed to gain a majority. This is despite the fact that Dion seemingly gave up support freely by proposing a new carbon tax, something that many people still don’t understand. Rest assured, this new “tax” suggestion is probably dead now, regardless of what benefits or problems it had, and Dion is still going to step aside in May anyway.

With a coalition, there is finally hope for alternate views in the House. It’s no longer a game between the Conservatives and the Liberals, since we will soon have NDP cabinet ministers. Although I am no expert, I predict the era of majority governments as we know it has ended. With this precedent, minority party supporters (NDP, Green, etc.) will finally begin to vote as they wish, instead of “strategically” voting for one of the two major parties. This will eat away at somewhat inflated support for these parties, but they won’t disappear entirely thanks to the benefits of how coalitions work. Although votes have never been “wasted” entirely (since all parties receive $1.95 for each vote they get), the prospect of coalitions will further discrease the perception of wasted votes in Canada.

Stability of government will no longer need to depend on just one party’s ability to satisfy everyone, a gargantuan task for any society that actually pays attention to politics. Emerging minority views (Green, NDP), which are particularly popular with young people, will play a role in government even before they reach mainstream level (if they ever do). This isn’t quite as far as some countries have gone with proportional representation, but it’s a step ahead for our country. Government representation is now one step closer to including everyone.

What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 3:51 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.